Friday, December 11, 2009

World of Warcraft's 3.3. patch added a new feature called random dungeons. This allows characters of abotu level 14 and higher to place themselves in a queue for a dungeon. When you do this, you'll be in queue with everyone else in your battlegroup (a related set of realms that typically only saw each other in PvP battlegrounds and Arenas). If you're doing random dungeons, here are some tips:

At low levels, make sure you loot the last boss. The reward is apparently on a boss, not given automatically. I lost out due to this.

If you don't zone in automatically, you can click the "transport to dungeon" or whatever it's called button after the party is formed.

Don't sign up as leader unless you're familiar with the dungeon and willing to walk people through it

The penalty for leaving is just a 15 minute time-out. If you get a really bad group, just bow out politely.

The new zone map is awesome. Use it.

This will probably be the new way to power-level, since it gets you tons of dungeons faster than you could run to them.

If you die, you have to run back in. Make sure you know the layout outside the dungeon before going in.

If there is an option to disenchant, don't hesitate to use it. It's the same priority as "greed." Of course, check sell price for the item first. Greed might be better.

If someone wants to leave the group, don't get upset. They're automatically replaced.

If someone is linkdead, give them some time (e.g. a few minutes) and then initiate a group-kick vote.

When new people come in to an existing group, ask if they need an escort. Don't assume they know the way to where you are in the dungeon.

It's a lot of fun at lower levels. At high levels, it finally makes pugging worth doing for me. I never wanted to pug before, but I think that's because there was so much emphasis on not pugging for players who were good. Now the good and the bad all want to get the rewards from random dungeons, so you're more likely to get an evenly mixed group.